


The Case of John Watson and the Pavlovian Response

by ancientreader



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Did I mention that Sherlock is an idiot?, First Time, Lingerie, M/M, No but really stupid, Stupid experiment, Teensy-weensy amounts of pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-22
Updated: 2015-05-22
Packaged: 2018-03-31 12:48:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3978664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ancientreader/pseuds/ancientreader
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John can't tear his eyes off the display window at Agent Provocateur. Sherlock intends to leverage that fact.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Case of John Watson and the Pavlovian Response

**Author's Note:**

  * For [koshartu](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=koshartu).



Sherlock Holmes is so well accustomed to tiresome people who want to get a leg over with him that he falls into a logical fallacy: he assumes that anyone who wants to get a leg over with him must ipso facto be tiresome. In the years since he automatically deflected John Watson’s naïve and unconscious expression of interest with that cliché concerning his intimate spousal relationship with his work, Sherlock has often had cause to regret his intellectual carelessness. At times his regret has been tinged with amusement — John’s fist-clenching jealousy over Irene Adler and, later, over Janine springs to mind — or lashed with pain — as in the months leading up to John’s wedding and, of course, the months after. 

The day itself is a miserable blur.

Since the divorce from Mary, though, and John’s move back to Baker Street, Sherlock has been stewing in a rich, almost heady brew of frustration. This frustration arises from the certain knowledge that John wants Sherlock as much as Sherlock wants John but, owing to Sherlock’s own foolishness, has been tamping down the want for so long that he is not only unaware of it, but also likely to panic if Sherlock makes any direct move to clarify it for him, by, for example, shoving him up against a wall and kissing him, something Sherlock thinks of doing on average five times a week. Thwarted love was more bearable in the days when Sherlock had resigned himself to never having John than it is now. Because now, clearly, if only _certain people_ were not _idiots_ , a mutually satisfying sexual relationship, even one attended with romanti— _other forms of pleasant physical contact and, on John’s part, expressions of admiration and esteem_ — would be possible. Strike that. _Inevitable_.

Item: When John is sitting in his chair reading, his gaze reliably drifts away from his book and toward Sherlock, where it rests, his expression growing fonder and fonder until he suddenly recalls himself, flushes, and shoves his attention back to the page.

Item: John’s breath quickens and he licks his lips whenever he is near Sherlock. This applies not only when they have concealed themselves for surveillance purposes, when the thrill of the case might account for it, but even if Sherlock, say, just happens to need something in a cabinet that John is standing in front of and therefore has to stand close behind John in order to reach for it. 

Item: John reaches for Sherlock — abortively, mind you — so often that the gesture almost amounts to a tic. _Touch_ — No. _Tou_ — No. _T_ — No. With each iteration, his mouth tightens and he looks down, blinking.

Yes, every tell is hotly pursued by withdrawal, and Sherlock has just about had it. Insight has never been a feature of John Watson’s internal workings. This defect in him may be the other face of his straightforward acceptance of phenomena others find peculiar or threatening: phenomena such as Sherlock, for instance. 

But at times his obliviousness has made him cruel — to Sherlock, to himself, to many of the women he has dated, who notice what John misses, and who not unnaturally feel that they have been misled. Cheated, even. Now that they are all out of the picture — John hasn’t even pretended to try to date since he split with Mary — Sherlock nobly sympathizes with them. For Sherlock, who has already been waiting a long time, will wait much, much longer for John to understand himself without a ( _figurative_ , Sherlock reminds himself) slap in the face. 

Fortunately, a manipulative and not entirely ethical consulting detective remains manipulative and not entirely ethical even after he acknowledges the power of sentiment over himself. Which is to say that Sherlock has made some further observations of John, and that he has a plan, one based in well-established principles of behavioral science.

This plan came to Sherlock all at once, in the middle of a case that required him and John to conduct surveillance near the Grosvenor Street branch of Agent Provocateur. They spent three hours looking out of a first-story window across the street, and as far as surveillance was concerned John Watson would have been of use only if everything and everyone they were looking out for had been confined to the Agent Provocateur display window. Prince Philip could have passed by escorted by a herd of winged hippopotami and John would not have noticed, such was the spell cast over him by the sight of lacy knickers. Lacy knickers in black. Lacy knickers in white. Lacy knickers with an enticing rear opening that though not correctly placed for penetration either anal or vaginal nevertheless contrives to suggest the possibility of both. 

In short, John Hamish Watson has a serious boner for lingerie. A boner of proportions so impressive that Sherlock can use it as a club with which to knock John loose from his merely habitual heterosexuality. 

_Boner. Club._ Oh, for— Sherlock wrinkles his nose. Frustration is making him stupid.

 

*  
From his first shopping expedition, Sherlock learns that however closely fitted he may like his shirts, when it comes to his genitalia he prefers a garment configured so as sufficiently to contain the package. The saleswoman at Agent Provocateur commiserates, citing the trial by ordeal that makes up the average woman’s quest for a properly fitted brassiere, and provides the name of an online retailer devoted to lingerie for men. It is, of course, desirable to purchase a varied array of items with a view to conducting the several trials Sherlock expects his project to require; hence the £1,459.86 Mycroft finds charged to his credit card the following month.

*

In the first round of Sherlock’s campaign, the field of battle is a case of ivory smuggling, surveillance for which requires him to pass an evening leaning against the bar in a louche nightclub while giving off an air of involvement in some nebulous and lucrative criminal enterprise. The presence of his bodyguard, a small but menacing fellow with short sandy-gray hair and an obvious military record, lends verisimilitude to the performance. In fact, of course, Sherlock had worked out the smugglers’ identities much earlier that day, thanks to some carelessness in their handling of their bank transactions, so he is free to concentrate on his personal project.

His armament this evening comprises a crimson silk thong with black piping at the waistband, worn, or “displayed” might be a better word, between a pair of low-slung black jeans and a T-shirt bought two sizes too small and therefore short enough to ride up, purely by accident, whenever Sherlock runs a hand through his hair or raises his arm to summon the barkeep. 

Sherlock has tested the effect in the mirror before going out. The T-shirt rides up, the jeans shift minutely downward, and the pale glow of Sherlock’s hip is accentuated by the narrow band of black and red that crosses it. Sherlock palms himself through his trousers, pleased.

John’s reaction at the nightclub proves satisfactory, too: every time the T-shirt and jeans part company, however briefly, he swallows hard, glances right and left, shifts from foot to foot. 

Sherlock is chalking up this first knickers trial as a perfect success when, after a mere half-dozen extensions of his torso, the stitching gives way that secures the waistband to the actual thong. The tension in the elastic is not high enough to make the snapback painful, but over the course of the next few minutes the entire garment shifts downward inside Sherlock’s trousers and wads itself around his balls. The entire garment, that is, except for the last couple of inches of fabric, which have caught in the hair between his arse cheeks and pull at it every time Sherlock moves. Since leaving his post at the bar would compromise his faux surveillance, he is reduced to standing in more or less Palace Guard position for an hour, until he can plausibly tell John he has made the necessary observations and they are free to go home.

“Sherlock, are you all right?” John asks once they’ve given the cabbie their address. 

“I’m fine.”

John persists. “Only, you seem … stiff. Like you might have pulled something.”

“I’m perfectly well.”

“Because that was not your normal gait, when we were leaving the place.”

“I’ve told you, everything’s fine,” Sherlock says, between his teeth. He stares out the window, willing his face not to heat.

“Hm,” John says. He sounds skeptical, but mercifully does not inquire further. 

*

Sherlock tells himself there’s no reason to be disappointed, for although the active portion of his experiment was abbreviated by the failure of the equipment, it lasted long enough to confirm the power of the hold that knickers have over John. Sherlock resolves to write a letter of complaint to the thong's manufacturer and, purely for scientific reasons — to augment his database of the residue left by the combustion of various textiles — incinerates the garment.

*

For his second foray into Getting John Watson Hot, Bothered, and Thoroughly Disinhibited, Sherlock selects beautifully cut lace briefs, low across the hips; in back, the snug upcurve of the hem nearly mirrors the downcurve of his cheeks. The briefs had been available in an array of colors, each more dreadful than the last, from hot pink to turquoise to lemon yellow; but the pale beige so inexactly called “nude” offers just enough of a contrast with Sherlock’s flesh to call attention to its translucent creaminess and thereby strongly to suggest the option to lick, to nibble, and even to nip. 

The catch is, of course, that, unlike the waistband of the ill-fated thong, no part of the briefs is visible in street clothes. It is therefore necessary for Sherlock to find, or manufacture, a condition that calls for him to appear partially undressed.

He rules out a case of serial thefts of prescription medications from the lockers at a middle-priced, unpretentious gym (the thefts are part of a scheme to drive the gym out of business so that the property may be redeveloped as affordable housing — affordable, that is, to stockbrokers, and Sherlock solves the case without ever getting up from the couch at 221B) because, though pretending to investigate could involve posing as clients, and therefore using the changing room, men other than John would almost inevitably be present. And Sherlock has less than no interest in _their_ opinion of the erotic appeal of lacy knickers as worn by him.

Haste then suggests itself as a pretext: there must be an event of such urgency as to make Sherlock rush into John’s room half clad so as to rouse him ( _Ha_ , Sherlock thinks sourly: _“rouse”_ ). Semi-nudity would not even be without precedent; Sherlock often enough drifts about the flat wrapped in a bedsheet, when some thought has seized him out of sleep. And there was the time he was so annoyed at Mycroft that he went thus attired to Buckingham Palace. 

As we have mentioned, Sherlock is manipulative and not entirely ethical; he is not, however, a socio- or psychopath, as even he himself and Sally Donovan have been forced to admit, so he neither stages a locked-room murder to be discovered in the wee hours nor sets fire to 221 so as to force the inhabitants onto the pavement in their skivvies. He simply pretends for a few hours not to have identified the culprits in a £70 million jewelry heist — this makes no difference, as the thieves are long gone and Sherlock knows exactly where they stashed the goods — and then, at three in the morning, bursts into John’s room, turns on every light, shouts “John! I’ve solved it!” and rejoices in John’s sleepy gasp, his widened eyes, and the twitch of his prick under the blanket. The softest possible “Oh” follows, for Sherlock has rehearsed his departing pirouette to include an infinitesimal pause at just the point where his rump (delectable, if he does say so himself) is, so to speak, at the full. Unfortunately, not being equipped with a rearview mirror, Sherlock has no visual image to accompany the “Oh”: pity, that.

It’s a pity, too, that back in his bedroom and putting on his trousers, he catches the zip on the delicate lace and not only tears it but breaks the zip to boot. He would have liked to deploy those briefs again, damn it.

At least John is still flushed when he arrives downstairs — flushed, shifty-eyed, and surreptitiously adjusting himself too. But although Sherlock’s hypothesis, that lacy knickers on Sherlock will exert at least as powerful a force as that of lacy knickers on lingerie-store mannequins, appears to be correct, John doesn’t pounce on him that night, or the next, or the one after that.

The strongest measures will be required. John must be induced to touch.

*

 

The scenario Sherlock comes up with is, admittedly, not without flaw: it calls for the sacrifice of a dressing gown, although said dressing gown need not be Sherlock’s favorite blue silk, or his warmest and most delicious pale brown cashmere. He unearths the olive green he has not worn in years — but wait. Olive green is not flattering to his complexion. The blue it must be, then. On the fourth evening after the loss of those perfect briefs, with John sat in front of the telly, Sherlock announces his intention to conduct an experiment (John frowns, because Sherlock’s experiments normally go unannounced except by their consequences, but “Don’t do anything loud during _Strictly Come Dancing_ ” is all he says) and re-ties the sash of the blue silk, with a pang.

But the blue silk doesn’t matter. _Underneath_ matters.

 _Underneath_ are knickers that have kissed dear old Sexy goodbye and set sail for the farther reaches of OhGodJesusPlease. Briefs, again, but these are of black silk translucent netting, with a narrow line of lace, also black, in front, an inch or so under the low waistband. When Sherlock lays his prick up against his belly and tucks the knickers over it, the frill of lace passes just over the juncture between head and shaft. His balls are pressed up and forward; the sensation is ever so slightly uncomfortable, in a way to … _remind himself of himself_ might say it. The thought of John seeing him like this, John helpless not to touch him like this, sends an electric flicker through him.

Sherlock wills away the feeling. _Focus. _There will be time for all the rest later. He secures his goggles. Takes up his tongs. Drops a cube of potassium into a beaker of water.__

Potassium combusts in contact with water. 

And when we say “combusts” …

_“Sherlock!”_

Too late, Sherlock remembers that someone ( _John_ ) beating out flames with his bare hands is liable to sustain burns. He backs away from John and strips off his burning dressing gown. Bundles the dressing gown between his hands to starve the flame. 

The potassium in the beaker has burned itself out. Nothing else is on fire. Trembling, Sherlock pours a box of salt over the kitchen table anyway. The pain in his hands and on his forearms is not immediate, and then it is.

It’s not as bad as it would have been, if John were the one feeling it.

Sherlock stands in the middle of the kitchen, ravishing in the OhGodJesusPlease knickers, his burnt dressing gown crumpled on the floor beside him. He can’t seem to move. John is moving, though. He is saying, “Jesus, Jesus, Sherlock, you fucking idiot, did you just fucking drop a cube of potassium into a beaker of water, what the hell were you thinking of — ” as he draws Sherlock over to the sink and runs cool water over his hands and forearms until the sink is full and then stands there, his left hand holding Sherlock’s left biceps, his right arm stretched around Sherlock’s waist and holding Sherlock’s right arm at the elbow, the whole line of his leg and torso pressed against Sherlock’s leg and torso, his forehead pressed against Sherlock’s shoulder.

“You need a burn specialist,” John says.

“There was no particulate matter in the air. Why are you hoarse?” 

“Ha.” John clears his throat but he is still hoarse. “You’ll have to work that one out for yourself. Something to occupy you in hospital, maybe.”

“John — ”

“Shut up.”

*

John helps Sherlock dress. “Hn,” he says, “ _hn_ ,” angrily, stripping off the OhGodJesusPlease knickers, helping Sherlock on with plain boxer briefs, with trousers; pulling an old T-shirt over Sherlock’s head, stretching the armholes wide so the fabric doesn’t brush against Sherlock’s skin. 

Despite the cool water, Sherlock’s palms and forearms seem still to be burning. Despite the physical contact with Sherlock, John shows no sign of arousal.

At the hospital, while John watches, Sherlock’s hands and arms are cleaned, skin substitute is applied to two large-ish patches of second-degree burn on the ball of his right thumb and the lower surface of his left forearm, and he gets a dose of intravenous antibiotics. Sherlock watches John watch: John chews the inside of his cheek, clenches his fist, seems about to speak and then says nothing. Around dawn, Sherlock is deemed fit to leave, with a list of instructions, a prescription for more antibiotics, an appointment at a burn clinic, and some scathing words about his good fortune: no apparent nerve damage and, probably, minimal scars. John, looking gray and exhausted, puts them in a cab.

“You need some breakfast,” he tells Sherlock when they get home.

“I’m not hungry. John — ”

“Healing from serious burns takes a lot of energy. You’ll eat.” This is as many words as John has spoken to Sherlock in the past five hours.

 _Lucky, lucky, lucky_ : that was what the burn specialist had said, more than once — said rightly, as Sherlock must acknowledge now, because he can, with only a little difficulty, bring his tea to his lips and manage his fork to eat his scrambled eggs; because after breakfast he will be able to take himself to the toilet, alone; because though buttons will be difficult till the bandages come off, he can manage a T-shirt and track pants; because although his single-minded stupidity has evidently cost him John, he still has his hands and therefore his work and his music. 

Luck feels exactly like disaster.

Sherlock lowers his eyes to his plate, and he eats.

After breakfast he uses the toilet ( _lucky_ ) and retreats to his room. The morning is bright now. John moves around the kitchen and the sitting room for a while. He makes a phone call; his tone is apologetic, so he must be calling out to work. When he leaves the flat, he doesn’t slam the door, but he doesn’t tell Sherlock goodbye, either.

*

Two hours later, Sherlock is still sat disconsolate on his bed, surrounded by his knicker arsenal. _Clever_ , he thinks. He might as well be a capuchin monkey turned loose in a roomful of reagents. The metaphor is apter than he would like.

When he hears John’s footsteps on the stairs, he takes his head in his hands and rocks sideways. His stomach hurts.

A knock.

Sherlock straightens up, takes his hands away from his head and sets them palms-down on his thighs, organizes his face into indifference. “Come in.”

John looks around at the scattered morsels of lace and silk and draws in a breath. “So,” he says. “Knickers.”

“Oh! I rather had the impression you weren’t speaking to me.”

“Let’s see, could I have been furious with you for setting yourself on fire? Yes, I could. Also, I had to go and have a think. Again, I say: So. Knickers.”

“You like them,” Sherlock replies, sullenly.

“I do, quite right. On _women_.”

“For God’s _sake_!” Sherlock cries. “Listen to yourself! That night when we did the surveillance across the way from Agent Provocateur. Oh, no, wait: _I_ did surveillance. _You_ never took your eyes off the display window. From my observations I developed a hypothesis. _John Watson is sexually aroused by knickers._ I tested the hypothesis. To my entire lack of surprise, you got half hard every time you looked at me in knickers.” Under his breath: “Last night doesn’t count.”

“I agree, it doesn’t. But for a genius, you’re rubbish at experimental design.”

Sherlock stares at him.

“What got me going that night was the picture of knickers plus women. Knickers by themselves, I can take or leave. But you, in your clever experiment, introduced a confounding factor. Every time you gave me an eyeful of you in fancy knickers, you were giving me an eyeful of _you_. The knickers didn’t come into it.”

There is a pause of perhaps a microsecond.

“ — Also,” John continues, after Sherlock has lunged up, shoved him against the wall, and kissed him, “I have another hypothesis for you to test.”

“What,” Sherlock says absently, being otherwise occupied. 

“Well, you have all these experimental materials — _oh_ — lying around. You should — should investigate the possibility of teaching a middle-aged man a — a new kink. Kink. Repeated exposu— _Oh, Jesus_.”

For while John is talking, Sherlock has established the truth of his own new hypothesis: namely, that even when he has only partial use of his hands, he can open John Watson’s flies. This accomplishment under his belt, he slides to his knees, where he engages his mouth in close empirical study (“Oh, fuck,” John says, and “Oh God, fuck, that’s so good that’s so good, _please_ ”) of the sexual responses of John Watson. 

Never again, Sherlock swears, will he theorize before he has all the evidence.

 

*

Some time later, having demonstrated the manual dexterity so useful to a doctor in both professional and personal life, John remarks, quite idly:

“And then there’s just going commando.”

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Holmestice, koshartu! Rather as John seems likely to, I developed a men-in-lingerie kink while *cough* researching this, and I hope you enjoy the result. 
> 
> [ Here](https://xdress.com/product/view/panties/the-lace-brazil-brief-z291) are Sherlock’s “nude”-colored lace briefs.
> 
> [Here](http://claireluxealone.tumblr.com/post/111200476614/after-work-homme-sweet-home) is the inspiration for the black netting briefs.
> 
> The thong exists only in my imagination and, perhaps, dear reader, in yours.
> 
> Would you like to see potassium reacting with water? Sure you would. But please don’t try [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1z0AVvY9yM) at home. 
> 
> Warm thanks to my ever-so-helpful betas, [TSylvestris](http://archiveofourown.org/users/TSylvestris/profile), whose suggestions vastly improved the ending, and [Chryse](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Chryse/profile), whose thong anecdote inspired Sherlock's ... difficulties.


End file.
